Mark, you are quite right. Winners don't wallow in sour grapes and excuses. They go out and do what it takes to win. The customers may be quite blameworthy, but they sure don't care what I think. The problem for us is how much morphing along the way the candidate will have to undergo in order to get the customer approval rating he needs to win.
Witness that new American flag lapel pin he sports. Sure hope he hasn't been taken over by the body snatchers.
So here's the problem with racism. It's a matter of math, and I agree with you Mark that not all the negative Obama vote is about racism, perhaps not even most of it. My calculation is you knock off 5 to 10 % off the poll results to estimate what the vote will really be for Mr. Obama, and that's the head wind known as the Wilder effect, assuming normal turnout. Unfortunately, you have to add to that the Osama/Obama what's-the-difference effect, coupled with visceral certainty that the man must be…one of those Muslims.
Of course, we then we have to factor in the likely actual turn out, which will be a real wild card. I don't believe the average racist voter is all that motivated to get off his fat, lazy, alcohol-soaked behind and vote for a guy as iffy as McCain, so that part of the wild card works in our favor. On the other hand, some of those in that anti-Muslim crowd tend to hit the steroids, so throw some chips back into that pot.
So what else was going on in the Kentucky's that had such lopsided turnouts against Obama? The Hillary effect. You know, the appeal to women by saying “It's our turn to be on top now, and how dare some young black upstart interfere with her coronation. White women really have it much worse than black men. Sob, sob, sob."
There has also been her careful cultivation, a la Reagan, of the hateful side of voters who are a little dumb around the edges. You know, heaping scorn on people who are highly educated and have the gall to have left Joe Lunchbucket behind in the ditch of American economic and cultural stagnation. (Note: We really value education in this country because that's what made us great, but we love to despise those, like Obama, who have actually gotten one. And let's punish him a little more for the fact that it wasn't handed to him by a childhood of privilege.)
Then there's the experience thing and that general cloud around Obama's patriotism credentials. Reverend Wright and even Michelle have had the disrespect to suggest that our country is not the pristine bastion of democracy, justice, and wholesomeness we should wish it into being, so there are another couple of eggs we can throw at him.
So, Mark, it's not just racism—not by a long shot. But just the same, your overall point still comes shining through. You can cry all you want about how unfair things are, and maybe you can even get some kind of award for that, but that ain't going to get you into the Oval Office. Mr. Obama is well aware of that, even if some of his supporters are a little confused. That's how he got where he is.
I just worry about that little flag lapel pin.

MR. Shields;
Mrs. Clinton is starting to seem like Sarah Bernhardt, past her prime, and bumping around on her peg leg like Captain Ahab. Surely, she speaks the truth. She does not understand it, and she has the dazed look of a duck that's been hit on the head. What she does not understand is how desparate America is for change, and how often that change has been side tracked, or denied; and she does not understand that the division she sows in what to her is a game, is deathly serious to us. No one should gloss over the deep racial divisions this country faces. No one should underestimate the racial enmity contained in the Democratic party. It is working class whites who have paid the price for the approximation of equality we have with blacks. We have not been able to raise them except at the price of lowering ourselves. They are not more equal; but we are less so. So; there is a great distance between democrats, and only our mutual desire for peaceful change will help us to surmount our differences. So; will Mrs. Clinton hang on to hear cat calls of: Here She Comes, as she stumps the Democrats into defeat? Her references of the Assasination of Robert Kennedy may be mere wishful thinking; but my bet is that any room holding both her and Mr. Obama will be the most dangerous place in the country. I was surprised to hear that there were actual threats; even though I assumed as much for him if elected. It is just too soon for violence, and it will always be so. Yet; there is no minimizing the fact that many whites hate blacks, and many blacks hate whites, and there must be money in it some where, or the energy required would exhaust the national spirit. In any event, if she is hanging on in the hopes that he will suddenly depart, it is a false and hopless motive. If she is just trying to recoup some of her losses, she might better wait quietly. Thanks. Sweeney

I guess I'm not "likable" enough.
I'm one of those you describe . I have been horrified by "the eagerness of so many Obama backers to dismiss these returns by attributing their candidate's rejection to the irredeemable "racism" of the voters in the Democratic presidential primary."
I am a union member. I have donated and worked on campaigns for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, Clinton, Gore and Kerry. I was supporting Edwards until Obama's "likable enough" debate comment made me realize the men were going to close ranks around a man. I started working for Hillary.I belong to the NAACP, the ACLU and used to belong to NARAL. I vote in all elections. I go to rallies and meetings. Realizing Obama's failure to hold NATO hearings he came to seem to me all fluff. In this process I have been called and treated as a racist. If you don't like Obama, regardless of one's history and work within the democratic party, one is a racist now. Me and my friends feeling this way will stay home if Obama gets this. My party of inclusion now only includes men --and women who genuflect before men.
What a line of loser male candidates closing ranks to get a little frisson of power by support for yet another man--Edwards, Richardson, Kerry, Dodd, McGovern.
--Hillary or no one!

Haven't the Democrats been using the "Blame the Customer" excuse since 1948?

Mark, another little footnote. How in the world did you let that greaseball colleague of yours on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer get away with that comment about Obama “pandering” to Jews? This is the guy who insisted when you were present on the same show in 2003 that the American invasion of Iraq was a “noble cause”. Talk about pandering.
You wrote a very nice column several weeks ago about how you should “eat crow” for counting out Billary too soon. There isn't enough crow on the whole planet Mr. Brooks could eat to make up for aiding and abetting that war criminal president of ours in his destruction of the sovereign nation of Iraq. When are you going to take your self righteous and self serving phony-baloney colleague to task for trying to pawn off the basest form of cheerleading as journalism?

Re: gtupelo@gmail.com
I don't think I am particularly racist or sexist in seeing Mr. Obama as the better candidate, or Hillary as the worst candidate. I don't want to vote for Mr. Obama. I have absolutly no reason to vote Hillary. The Clintons gave away the government to have a balanced budget and to pass Nafta. Where was the long term gains? Why not leave the government broke if the Republicans are going to use deficits to enrich themselves and enslave the public. I could have had afforded another child on my part of Reagan's national debt, and now that I have lost a child and cannot have more, I regret having paid it off only to be saddled up again by spendthrifts. I would rather vote for a white woman than a black man. I would rather vote for my wife than any woman in the country since she is as much a moral force as a organizational genius. I cannot say that about Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton is like Joe Lieberman, a republican in drag. It is not that Mr. Obama is better because he is a man. He is better because as an attorney he is qualified, and because he has less history and money, he is more morally qualified to be president. I would rather that neither be nominated because neither can appeal to the soul of this nation. But even there, Mr Obama is more in touch with our need for change, and in a unique position to heal the ulcerated sore on our union called racial division. We cannot talk to blacks, and they cannot talk to us. We do not love each others guts. We have no mutual respect. Perhaps, Mr. Obama, having no grievance of slavery hung about his neck, and clearly neither white nor black could, if elected, knit us together where our stuffing is falling out and make us whole. It is only a hope, and unlikely to bear fruit; but who knows. Thanks, Sweeney

Re: Fred
Sir; What have the republican been doing since 1948? There was no possible way left to democrats to deal as equals with countries like Russia and China because of the red baiting republicans, making Vietnam and Korea all but inevitable. There was not one of the social programs begun by democrats in the interest of restoring social justice that has not been sabotaged by republicans, robbed of its funding, and in every respect, maligned. Democrats try to appeal to a divided majority of ever kind of constituent that has lost as a result of republican wins, but they have no natural unity, and most are of divided loyalties, so it is very easy to wedge them apart often enough to deny the whole society any progress or peace. Surely the democrats appeal to well meaning intellectuals. What does it tell you if the most educated in society vote democratic, and yet the republicans do all within their power to deny education, and even to hamstring basic science? All the redneck democrats who were once kept ignorant and empoverished because there was no need to treat them better are being ridden now by a different sort of horse, but they are as ignorant, uneducated, hateful, and desolate as ever -now that they are republicans. Why should they do anything for social change when it has done nothing for them, but everything to hurt them? The republicans know how to ring their bell and rattle their chain; but even republicans are foolish to confuse the frustrations of nearly every class with complacency. There are no half way solutions in failing societies, but until the democrats have tried them all, and until the republicans sabotage them all there will be no great, sweeping social change this society demands and the world await.